3.5 Million Sales in 24 hours.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that as of the first 24 hours of Diablo® III's release, more than 3.5 million copies had been sold, setting the new all-time record for fastest-selling PC game.* That number does not include the more than 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as part of signing up for the World of Warcraft® Annual Pass promotion. Altogether, more than 4.7 million gamers around the world were poised to storm Sanctuary on day 1 of Diablo III's release -- representing the biggest PC-game launch in history.

As of the first week of the game's availability, that number had already grown to more than 6.3 million.* The above figures also do not include players in Korean Internet game rooms, where Diablo III has become the top-played game, achieving a record share of more than 39% as of May 22.†

yes big sucess just becouse we were waiting so many years, but beating game in 3-4 days... where you can get all what you want on AH, seems numbers of people playing will be drasticly short in one month.

I've seen many criticism of this game on these forums, some of them even have some merit.

But short? Short? Diablo 3 is at least twice as long as Diablo 2. Act 1 alone is about equal to Act 1 and 2 of Diablo 2. And it has a lot more replay value, with 4 modes instead of 3, random events that you won't all have seen in the first playthrough, and lots of different interactions based on class and companion.

Anyway. Congratulations Blizzard on breaking all the records. You deserved it.

- The game is short;- Leveling system is broken (soo few diversity in higher levels);- AH breaks the game;- No end-game.

- Depends what you mean. Of course it's short if you play 10 hours a day. Any game is short that way. If you consider normal difficulty to be "the game", it's not even targeted at you so bugger off. Personally I've played it already more than 40 hours since release, and I'm not even close to finishing Inferno on my first and only char. And I'm going to level up other classes later on. I can easily see myself playing it hundreds of hours. Not exactly short, no?

- What's broken about it? The fact that you don't have to insert next to useless skill points every single level?

- I don't get why some people bother whining about the AH. Stop using it if you feel it breaks the game for you. All it really does is give the game a proper economy instead of tedious trading that D2 had.

- There's Inferno, there's tons of gearing to do, there's proper PvP coming in a patch. What else did you even expect?

- The game is short;- Leveling system is broken (soo few diversity in higher levels);- AH breaks the game;- No end-game.

- Depends what you mean. Of course it's short if you play 10 hours a day. Any game is short that way. If you consider normal difficulty to be "the game", it's not even targeted at you so bugger off. Personally I've played it already more than 40 hours since release, and I'm not even close to finishing Inferno on my first and only char. And I'm going to level up other classes later on. I can easily see myself playing it hundreds of hours. Not exactly short, no?

- What's broken about it? The fact that you don't have to insert next to useless skill points every single level?

- I don't get why some people bother whining about the AH. Stop using it if you feel it breaks the game for you. All it really does is give the game a proper economy instead of tedious trading that D2 had.

- There's Inferno, there's tons of gearing to do, there's proper PvP coming in a patch. What else did you even expect?

*The publishers have too much power as it is.*The game should have been reviewed shortly before release. Half the critic industry is wound round Activisions little finger any way but a few honest reviews would have gone to press. (I'm not saying that the critics are getting directly paid or any of that conspiracy theory nonsense but they certainly benefit from reviewing AAA titles well).*The sales act as a glowing appraisal of Blizzards "always online" DRM which is a travesty of huge proportions. The damage it causes will only become clear in time once other devs and publishers have jumped on board.*The game would have sold like hotcakes because of the hype generated any way so it was always going to be a storming success.*Basically this is a corporate marketing masterclass and will only serve to further stagnate a market that is already starved of originality.

Diablo 3 isn't as bad as some AAA titles that have been released recently but it's not amazing either. Critics need to quash the fear around being honest about AAA titles like this.

Edit: I also personally think some legislation should be introduced that forces the publisher/developer to release a game for review shortly before release. I believe the amount of money in this industry these days demonstrates that it is in the publics interest to know what they're buying before the purchase is made. It's almost misleading when you withold your product because you know you'll earn extra revenue by doing so.

yes big sucess just becouse we were waiting so many years, but beating game in 3-4 days... where you can get all what you want on AH, seems numbers of people playing will be drasticly short in one month.

Pleeeease. 4x18 hours is still 72 hours of gametime, which is way way more than most other overhyped games out there.

The game as it is is a masterpiece, I love it even more than Diablo 2 and can't and don't want to understand the criticism some have in the forum. But thats just a few people, compared to the 5 Million people playing this game a few upset posts in the forum are nothing.

People calling for refunds because they could beat the game within a few days. Well suckers guess what, you can beat every game (excluding MMO's of course) which comes out today within a few days easily, many games even in 1 day. So I think it's worth the money.